Page 99 of Liar
“You’re coming with me,” he growls. Thorne pulls his fingers out, and I double over, coughing and spitting out the rest of the cold saliva that had built up in my mouth.
He yanks me by the braid, pulling me into a deserted classroom. Nobody comes to my aid. They just watch, slack-jawed, as Thorne treats me like his childhood, molting teddy bear and tosses me aside.
The classroom’s dark. Thorne doesn’t bother to flick on lights. Rather, he pulls down the shade on the door so no one can sneak in a last glance.
“You sick bastard!” It doesn’t come out as harsh as I want. I’m still coughing up the taste of him—salt, fury, humiliation. “It’s done. Nothing you can do will stop Damion Briar from spending the rest of his life in prison.”
Thorne prowls closer. Muscle memory is a funny thing—it reacts even when you don’t want it to, and mine recoils in fear, bouncing against the front desks, the force of it scraping its legs across the floor.
He watches but doesn’t say a word.
“You really want to hurt me?” My voice rises with that same fear, and I hate myself for it.
“Where’s your courage, little pretty?” Thorne cocks his head. “Did you use it all up with your new agent friend and your bodyguard butler keeping you cushy and safe in your manor?”
Thorne’s tone flows across the room, deathly quiet.
“I did what I had to do.” I straighten. “And I’d do it again. You weren’t going to help Savannah. Throwing money at her wouldn’t have changed what your father did to her. He deserves to be physically punished for that, not just stolen from. And Malcolm—” my voice cracks under Thorne’s inscrutable stare. “My father, what he went through. You knew. You knew!”
Thorne blinks at my sudden scream.
I continue, “The first time you snuck into my room, the moment you touched me, the second I slept with you for the first time, you used it all for your gain. I meant nothing to you.”
“You forgot the time when I first saw you.”
I jolt at the sudden, soothing cadence of his tone.
He takes advantage of my few seconds of silence. “I was furious at the sight of you. With your white hair and too-dark eyes, so clean and innocent. Completely ignorant to the way you were brought into this world, living a life of safety with people who bought you on a street corner. I couldn’t fathom it. I still can’t—how someone so pure could come out of circumstances so evil. Yet there you were, untouched. Untainted.” He pauses. “And so unlike me. I’m born from the same darkness, and I’m so goddamned furious—”
“And you never stop,” I whisper. “You’re so angry. At school, in your home, to your friends, in bed with me. So, so unhappy. I refuse to be your victim as some sort of twisted penance for a past I have no control over. Find someone else to bully, Thorne, because I’m done.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words come out strained. Like they taste terrible and foreign to him. Like he’s never uttered that statement in his entire life.
Stay strong. He doesn’t give a shit about you.
“If you’re truly sorry, then let your father’s imprisonment be an entry into a new world for you,” I say. “This is your chance to have the life you despise me for living.”
“I’m—” His face scrunches up, frustrated. “I don’t know how.”
“Try starting by resisting the urge to publicly humiliate a girl by gagging her against the lockers.”
That was a mistake. His attention lowers to my mouth. A familiar warmth spreads low in my belly, too much like a cat unfurling into a long, satisfying stretch.
Furious with myself, I storm past him before this can go any farther, but that damned muscle memory of mine betrays me again, when I let him fuck me on a teacher’s desk.
Shockingly, Thorne lets me run past him and slam open the classroom door.
He doesn’t pursue me during my mad sprint to Dash’s car.
Chapter 32
Ember
I’m left alone for an entire two weeks. Fourteen days of quiet study sessions, unobstructed bathroom breaks, and effortless note-taking in class.
Even Aiko is suspicious of it as she places her elbows on either side of her lunch tray, guarding her food like an inmate. “Why does everyone like you all of a sudden?”